this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
678 points (99.4% liked)
Games
31990 readers
1 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is demonstrably wrong. The 30% cut is standard because Steam has used the same strategy as Amazon to fix prices across the market (a "Platform Most Favored Nation" clause—see the Wolfire Games v. Valve class action, specifically items 204 and 205 on pg 55). Competing storefronts cannot undercut Steam, so why would they take less than a 30% cut?
Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but Valve is stopping publishers from reducing the game cost by that much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?
Oh good, you are familiar with Cory Doctorow. He has an article on how Amazon abuses their position using the exact same playbook Valve uses.